Plants Need Love Too!

The codependency does not end with animals.  My plants are just as needy.  I am probably the worst gardener in the history of creation, but that doesn't stop me from fancying myself an amateur homesteader every spring and filling my earth boxes with seeds.  I even start seeds indoors while the weather is still awful, hoping to kick start things and stretch the season longer.

Things did not go as planned this year.

Meanwhile, the pets are back to normal.  Tess is crazed with chasing every fly, bee, wasp, and bird that happens to even think about setting wing in my backyard.  She is up the stairs of the deck and down the stairs, racing through the backyard, growling, and waving her tail around like a bushy rudder.  Percy is back to announcing to the world every time he needs to use the bathroom and now he's graduating to "Hey, human, it's five in the morning, you're still in bed, I'm hungry, and oh, look at this object here on the floor that I can make the most noise with so that you will get irritated and get out of bed."  Percy's new favorite thing is to burrow under the piece of sample carpeting I keep in the bedroom as a sort of place mat for Tess' bowls.  Apparently it is now Percy's mole hole.  Puckett continues to glare at everyone like they are beneath her and shouldn't even be allowed to exist.  She has appointed herself as food police and hawk eyes the food bowls even when she's not hungry.  And Willow, she's just retarded as usual.

I think maybe the animals are jealous of my plants.  In the first place Percy and Willow are obsessed with anything green that comes in a pot.  When I brought my first set of pansies home to deadhead and re-pot, they were so beside themselves, sniffing and pawing at the blooms, I had to move the flowers outside lest the cats expire on the spot with their excitement.  I spend a rather large amount of time deadheading said flowers, watering my vegetable boxes, and watching them like I expect them to start blooming right in front of my eyes.  It's a little more interesting than watching grass grow but about as productive.  I have already killed four seedlings when I tried to transplant them from their starter pots to the boxes outside.  Clearly the plants did not want to go outside, preferring to remain indoors getting their every whim addressed.  When I made the decision to move them outside, they protested by dying immediately.  It has been raining for days here and my carrot seedlings - planted directly outside - were horrified at the amount of water washing out their boxes so they all drowned one by one.  I now have four carrot seedlings struggling for life now that the sun as decided to show its face again; one extremely stubborn cucumber seedling who got it's own little makeshift house to protect it when the monsoon hit last week complete with hail; and two tomato seedlings that seem to glare at me in accusation every time I lean down to check on them.  One has reluctantly sprouted some extra leaves, pretty much telling me "Fine, I'll grow, but you can suck it."

The peppers refuse to show their faces.  I planted those seeds two weeks ago and there is nothing in that box.  They didn't even like the plant food I added to the soil.

As for the beans and the peas, they did great until Tess got jealous of how much time I spent weeding and watering them and dug them up, starting on one end of the box, and leaving a crater the perfect size of her paw in the soil.  One bean plant hung feebly to the dirt, waving its leaves and crying, "Help me, help me!"  Miraculously I managed to save this one, carefully shoving it back in the dirt, patting everything down and watering it until it was tamped down.  Peas and beans are pretty tough and a few of them are fine, but to keep Tess out there are now stakes and barriers all along the boxes.  I also dropped more seeds in the ground, hoping for the best. I can almost see the plants sticking their tongues out at the dog, sneering, "Nyah, nyah, nyah."

Tess continues to let me know of her displeasure by beating on the flower pots with her pouf of a tail every time she whirls around on the deck to go barreling downstairs.  The flowers are starting to wilt in the sun so they get moved to the shade every day at about noon.  They also have dog hair stuck all over their blooms. They are not pleased and they let me know it.

And now the gang has been joined by one little watermelon seedling.  It peeked out this morning, tentatively looking around to see if the forty days and nights of rain really are over and it can actually enjoy a bit of sunshine.  It's just the cutest thing, and despite my tendency to tell my plants, "Sink or swim, guys, sink or swim," this little guy is probably going to get the royal treatment just because I'm so glad it finally broke through the soil.

Seriously, it may not be the pets and plants that are codependent.  Maybe it's just me.

Writer's Digest Short Story Entry

My animals have been disturbingly well-behaved as of late so today's post is my 2015 Writer's Digest Short Story entry for nothing more than entertainment value.

The silhouette splashed across the drawn blinds like some monstrosity out of a B horror movie. I nearly dropped the wineglass I was washing into the sink.

I reached over to pull the blinds up expecting to see something of tarantula proportions, but instead, perched nonchalantly on the glass between the screen and the window, was a rather pretty little spider with a perfectly compact body in the shape of the number 8. A vivid orange marking decorated his back. The late afternoon sun had caught the spider's shadow and enlarged it exponentially through the drawn blinds, nearly giving me a heart attack.

“You could have warned me,” I told him. “Sitting there, looking like Shelob spread across the window like that. Scare a decent person to death.”

“I'll give you three wishes,” the spider replied.

I paused, the wineglass I was washing still in my hand covered in sparkling bubbles.

“Spiders don't grant wishes,” I said. “That's what genies are for.”

“You see a lamp around here?”

A smartass spider. Even better.

“I wish you'd stay out there,” I said.

The spider raised his two little front paws up to his brilliant green fangs and appeared to give a polite bow.

“Your wish is my command.”

And with that my after breakfast guest crawled up the glass and disappeared at the top. I wasn't about to be fooled into believing in a wish-fulfilling spider just because he could talk and disappeared at my command. He probably didn't want to get squashed, though I'm not the spider squashing sort. It's true I prefer them outside. Upon finding one of the little buggers in my house, I drop a shot glass over it and then slip a small piece of paper under its little feet. Most of the time they sit on the paper and patiently wait for me to take the entire contraption outside where I gently drop them into the garden. They usually break their fall by releasing a single thread of their beautiful silk. The smaller ones I leave in the house. As long as they clean up the bug population, they are free to stay, provided they remain out of sight and don't try to join me in bed.

Sometimes it's a toss up who gets to the spider first, me or the cat.

This guy, though maybe not B movie-sized, was large enough that he made me slightly nervous about welcoming him in my house.

A week later I walked into the kitchen to make an espresso and there in the middle of the white tile of my counter top sat my green-fanged, orange-decorated, little friend. He appeared to be preening, admiring his reflection in the stainless steel side of the espresso machine.

“Good morning. May I offer you a cup of espresso?” he said as though his taking up residence in the kitchen was the most natural thing in the world. He gestured to the espresso machine with his two front paws like a maitré d showing me the best table in the house. His orange marking almost resembled a bow tie though it was on the wrong part of his body. The rest of him was dotted with white like a tiny tuxedo.

I stared at him momentarily perplexed and speechless.

“Two wishes,” he said.

“I thought I wished you to stay outside,” I told him.

He rubbed his two front legs together thoughtfully. “Well, you did. And I did. But you still have two wishes left.”

“That's why you're here? To grant me my wishes?”

“I waited in the garden, but you never came,” he sighed. “You do know, I hope, that I haven't got all the time in the world. It's almost winter and I have plans for Halloween.”

No doubt to pose in somebody's fake spiderweb and scare the heck out of the trick-or-treaters. I briefly considered using him as my own prop in an art project.

“Don't even think about it,” he said.

“Do you have a name?”

“Fred,” he replied, tapping his front legs one at a time on the tile. “Just call me Fred.” Tap tap tap. “I'm a Bold Jumping Spider.” Tap tap tap. “We're good luck.”

“Well, Fred, you are quite pretty, but I'm not sure I want to share my house with you.”

“You're stuck with me for now,” he said. “At least until I find a mate. Then I'm afraid it might be all over for me.”

“You'll grant me any wish?” I asked. “Any wish at all?”

“Within reason,” he said, scuttling sideways in a little dance. “I mean, I can't bring George Washington back to life or bring Russell back to you, but you know, there is your artwork to consider and it's really not that bad.”

I regarded the spider. “How do you know about all that?” Not many people knew about my art. I had all but given up at this point and kept it as a secret indulgence just for myself.

“Dream weaver,” he said, waving his paws at me, though I knew spider silk came from the rear. “We know everything.” He sat up on his rump, balancing himself on his two back legs. “I am the embodiment of your creativity.”

Cheeky bastard.

“Don't let my cat see you doing that,” I said. “Behaving like a circus act would get her all excited.”

“Don't be rude,” he countered. “And stop changing the subject.”

“How did you know about Russell?”

He gave a smirk. “Everyone knows about Russell, my dear.”

I supposed he was right. I had loved nothing as much as my art and Russell. But back to the subject at hand.

“All right then, I wouldn't mind selling my best piece for a million dollars.”

“Small steps, my friend, small steps.”

“A gallery show?”

“Is that an official wish?”

I shrugged. “Sure.”

“Your enthusiasm is overwhelming. Please try to restrain yourself.”

As I mentioned before, I had all but given up ever being a professional artist. I was enthusiastic about my art, but the enthusiasm of others for it left a lot to be desired. 

I glared at him. “I wish for a successful gallery show.”

“Your wish is my command,” Fred said baring his green fangs in a grin.

“Thank you. But now, Fred my friend, you are out of here.” I grabbed my shot glass and tried to drop it over him. He jumped sideways into the sink, achieving some pretty impressive air. I panicked thinking he was going to fall right down the drain.

“Fred! Are you trying to kill yourself?”

He glared at me with his spider goggles.

I managed to get the shot glass over him after a few more hops around the stainless steel of the sink and slipped a piece of paper under his feet.

“This hurts me more than it does you,” I said as I carried Fred, the glass, and the piece of paper out into the garden. I set Fred free among a beautiful spray of late blooming roses.

“I'll be back,” he said as he crawled off on his irregular gait, looking for a meal. I pitied the grasshopper he was sure to unearth.

Nine months later having just returned from a very successful art gallery tour, I noticed a beautiful fuzzy spider with emerald green fangs and an orange marking on his back sitting calmly on the counter beside the espresso machine.

He seemed larger and quite well fed.

“Hello, again,” he said. “Still got one wish.”

“Fred, I haven't seen you in quite some time,” I said.

“You've been getting on quite well,” he said. “Congratulations on your success. My work, however, is not yet finished. You're still spinning your web. You still have the one wish.”

I thought about what he had said regarding finding a mate. “Fred, I wish you a long and fruitful life.”

“Your wish is my command.”

The next morning when I got up to prepare an espresso, lined up along the edge of my kitchen sink were six little black spiders with perfect little bodies in the shape of the number 8.

“Good morning,” they said all together in their tiny high-pitched voices. “You have three wishes.”

Who Are You and What Have You Done With My Pets?

The food saga has actually turned out quite tame and all four pets have been rather quiet and subdued as of late.

It's unnerving.

After a couple of days of dirty looks and reluctant munching, Puckett and Percy have embraced their new food enthusiastically and without incident.  Willow continues to turn up that pug nose of hers and will only eat three or four kernels of the original food in her cage where no one can see or bother her.  She is still a bit of an airhead about it though.  I fill her bowl and call her to come upstairs and jump in her cage and she will dance around in the kitchen mewing and watching me walk away with this look on her face like I'm taking sustenance right out from under her nose.  We go through this dance every day.  It's been over two months.

Other than that though, the animals are quiet.  Tess spends her days sacked out on the porch watching the world go by.  She doesn't even dance through the yard, chasing birds anymore. She barely barks at anything.  In the house she lays on her bed or on the kitchen floor and watches me with big eyes.  She will be eight years old in March so perhaps she is just getting older, but whenever I take her out for a walk or a run she has her old energy back and tears around like a puppy.  She plays with the Cowboy like she's still a puppy too.  She could be depressed because of the weather.  Or something else is up.

Puckett sits on her "throne" (a rather large box) and surveys her kingdom.  She doesn't even boss the other animals around anymore like she used to.  She just sits and glares at everyone.  And she definitely does not follow me around the house in the morning chirping and demanding affection.  She just gives me the hairy eyeball like I've done something.

Even Percy is subdued.  He usually runs around the house every morning announcing to the world that it's litter box time and then spends an eternity scratching the litter around.  Then he gets out of the box and runs through the annoucing that he is finished with his business.  Lately, he's in the box and out of it.  Then he goes and sacks out by the heater. Granted his normal bathroom behavior is rather annoying and gets old, but this new behavior is more worrisome if for no other reason, I feel like aliens have body snatched my animals and replaced them with Stepford "pet-bots." 

It's actually really just the worst thing.  Either everyone has had it with winter (and who could blame them, really) or else they are on especially good behavior because they have something really wicked up their sleeves, something extremely diabolical planned for me.

I'm having trouble sleeping at night.

How Dare You!

Willow has outdone herself at the same time as maintaining that she is indeed the most finicky, sensitive, and high maintenance of all my pets.  With a dog who has issues with other dogs and being away from home and another cat who has nonstop stomach issues, that is saying a lot.  I have been called high maintenance by ex-boyfriends and other men who decided they'd rather not date me.  I never thought of myself as high maintenance and then it occurred to me after this latest fiasco.  Maybe it's not me.  Maybe they just meet my pets and run for the  hills.

The high maintenance performance actually began with Percy.  Precious darling has developed a tummy issue.  Three times a day he has the trots something awful, proceeds to stink up the house and foul the litter boxes (yes, all of them) and then slams water like it's going out of style.  I thought kitty had stomach cancer and rushed him to the vet where he received a complete work over.  It turns out darling's tum-tum is just sensitive and he probably has food allergies or Irritable Bowel Syndrome.  Considering what this cat will ingest given the opportunity, IBS does not surprise me.  Food allergies, on the other hand, are extremely inconvenient for me, never mind that I embrace my gluten intolerance that makes me an inconvenience for everyone else.  Particularly at dinner parties.

But I digress.

I have been feeding Their Royal Highnesses the most high quality, high protein pet food I can find since researching that commercial pet food is basically junk food for animals.  Tess, the German shepherd with the tender tummy herself, can't handle commercial food anyway so I thought I was doing all my pets a favor by feeding them the high quality stuff.  Apparently Percy's tummy is even more tender than Tess' and now he's on an even more special diet.  The vet recommended Science Diet I/D.  I have fed this to pets before.  It's supposed to be super gentle on tummies.  The vet also said to just switch the food out and all three cats can eat it.  It's meant for sensitive tummies and therefore everyone can have it.  I took the bag home and filled three bowls with it. I wasn't too worried about Percy.  He actually will eat anything.  I was most worried about Willow as she despises change and every little thing makes her freak out (and express her opinion on the floor beside the litter box).  Puckett I'm never sure about.  She usually expresses her displeasure by pooping in my shoe.  Willow walked up to the bowls first and sniffed each bowl one way.  Then she sniffed them backwards.  Then she wrinkled her nose and stepped back.  Next came Puckett.  She sniffed each bowl.  Then she sniffed them backwards.  Then she sat back as well.  Percy came last.  He sniffed each bowl one way, then the opposite way, then the first way again and finally began hogging out on the middle bowl.  The other two cats joined him again as if thinking, "Hey, the old food magically appeared!"  Willow turned away immediately after sniffing and jumped on the box sitting on my kitchen floor.  She glared at me with one very pissed off expression like I just performed a betrayal of epic proportions.  Puckett watched Percy hog out for a moment, then smacked his ear to move him over to the next bowl.  She sniffed where Percy had been eating, then turned and returned to her bed, kneading it and purring loudly.  At this point I'm still not sure if she's fine with the food and just not hungry, or if she's going to leave me a gift later this evening.  I decided for as sensitive and finicky as Willow is, I would feed her in her cage with the old food.  I'm a bit worried she might decide to start peeing on the floor again.  I just got her to stop that (again).  I plopped her and her bowl of (regular) food in the cage and closed the door.  Usually when I put her in her cage, she eats a little something, maybe uses her litter box, then jumps into her kitty bed and takes a nap.  This time she sat frozen on the floor of her cage glaring at me through the bars.  She sniffed her bowl then looked up at me again, her face promising horrible things to come when I get home from work.  If looks could kill, I would probably be having my face eaten by all three of them at this point.

The world has wronged her and I have a feeling she isn't going to take it lying down.

Come Into My Parlor, Said the Spider to the Fly

It turns out not only are my chosen pets codependent, my involuntary pets are as well.

I have been dubbed the Spider Whisperer by several of my colleagues due to my strange and ridiculous claim that I can speak to spiders and they actually listen to me.  I have apparently inherited this trait from my mother since I have recently discovered that she has her own little eight-legged friend living in her Whirlpool who she calls "Bubala."  And she talks to Bubala like a pet.

My mother and I are strange creatures.

I have stood by my claim to communicate with spiders ever since the year I shared an apartment with my friend Stuart who was terrified of them.  He would squash them first and ask questions later.  What he did not know was that a little house spider shared quarters with us for the entire year, living in a web she spun above the door.  I never told Stuart and the spider never showed her face when he was home.  He spent a lot of time socializing and partying about town while I stayed home and watched TV or read.  In the evenings, the spider would come down out of her hiding spot and hang out in the middle of the carpet.  Just hang.  We'd hang together.  Around eleven o'clock I'd tell her, "It's almost eleven.  Stuart's going to be home soon so you might want to disappear."

I kid you not, she would.  Like a little magician's assistant.

When I moved to Wyoming it turned out that tiny jumping spiders enjoy my townhouse as much as I do.  Through the years they would hang out with me in the kitchen while I cooked or did the dishes and if I mentioned that they were getting too close to the sink, they would hop off and hang out elsewhere.  I trapped the larger of their brethern and transplanted them to the garden.  I might not have a problem with spiders but that doesn't mean I want some monstrosity capable of making a meal of one of my cats sharing my living room.

I had trouble dealing with my ex-boyfriend's tarantula, Scary Alice, at first, but after awhile she and I became great friends.  We had coffee and chats in the morning when the ex took a shower.  Alice would actually come out of her house and sit in the corner of her terrarium and hang out.  I told her her master was an idiot and she definitely seemed to agree.  She liked loud music and whenever we turned the bass up really loud she would come out of her house and put her front paws up on the glass.  My ex said they like the vibrations and maybe that's why spiders listen to me.  They just like the sound of my voice.

I have to say, I think I might miss Scary Alice more than I miss my ex, even if he was the love of my life.

Two weeks ago, before I left for my trip to Texas, I was in the kitchen washing my dishes.  The blinds were drawn over the window in front of me and I happened to look up.  A huge silhouette of something out of a B horror movie splashed across the window and I very nearly dropped the dish I was washing.  I yanked the cord to pull the blinds up expecting the worse and sitting calmly on the screen outside the window glass was a rather pretty little spider.  The sun shining through the blinds had blown it up to about fifty times its normal size but the reality was just a fly-sized beast hanging out between the glass and screen.  I have no idea how he got in there but I kept the window closed just in case he decided to move in. I had to look him up on the computer because I had never seen such a spider.  He had a nice shape, like a tarantula, but smaller, was all black, and had a pretty orange dot in the middle of his back.  He was not a black widow - I know what those look like and he was the wrong shape.  He was larger than the tiny jumpers I'm used to sharing my space with.  It turns out he was a Bold Jumping Spider and he was a male because they have the orange dots and bright green fangs.  As I said, rather a pretty little creature, but I still didn't want him in my house.

A week later I came home to a remodeled kitchen and four very angry pets.  They like the Cowboy but whenever I leave them with him, he fixes stuff and changes stuff and they don't like that so much.  I also came home to a new pet.  Sitting on my newly remodeled counter, smack dab in the middle of the white tile as if showing off his colors, was Mr. Bold Jumping Spider in all his orange, green, and black glory.  He was just hanging out like, "Yo, what's up?  Thought I'd move in while you were gone.  Come on over, have a cup of coffee."

Now I have no problem with spiders, even the black widows and the brown recluses, but I don't really want to go to bed at night knowing something of that size is hanging out in the kitchen.  Granted he wasn't as large as the spiderzilla I came home to one late night that was very easily larger than Scary Alice and very obviously a wolf spider, but still.  I like spiders but I have my limits. And yes, Bold Jumpers are one hundred percent harmless and even if they do bite a human it won't do any damage.  But Mr. Bold Jumping Spider was out of here.  I had a frank chat with him about how he couldn't stay.  He didn't like that and jumped in the sink.  I panicked thinking he was going to drown himself in the drain and grabbed my espresso glass to drop on top of him.  He hopped around in the sink a bit more and I kept thinking this guy is going to come flying at my face, all green fangs and indignation at my unwillingness to allow him to move in.  Finally I got the espresso glass on him and moved a piece of paper under him. 

A primitive but effective spider catching method.  It has worked many times in my favor.

I scooped up Mr. Bold Jumper - now christened "Fred" - the espresso glass, and paper all in one fell swoop and swept them outside where Fred was released in the garden.

I hope he's happy there as it is a lovely garden full of stuff for a guy like him to munch on.  He might even find a girlfriend, though I hope not too soon as the females of his kind rather enjoy biting the heads off their mates.  However, I have no doubt that he will probably find his way back in the house since he somehow already managed it once.

Perhaps Fred and Bubala can start a club.


Interesting fact I just learned from the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences, Entomolgy Department:  "The chances of being bitten by P. audax are slim to none. These spiders are difficult for collectors to catch, and they appear fearful of humans."

Fred had no fear of me.  None.  And I let him slip through my fingers!  There are some very irritated and angry arachnid collectors fuming at this very moment....

Not Quite Love at First Sight, but Perhaps Fate

Despite the Cowboy and the three cats, I still maintain that my German shepherd, Tess, is my longest, most successful relationship to date.  She is the love of my life, second only to the lovable, blue-point Himalayan I had as a teenager.  Tess might have her flaws - the bad breath, her aggression towards male dogs, her rampant infidelity - but I still very biasedly believe her to be the best dog ever to walk the Earth.

I actually found Tess on petfinder.com.  I had just purchased my house and was beginning what I thought the long quest to find the perfect dog, now that I had a backyard to keep her in.  In the past, as with all burn out crushes, I'd always rushed in, seduced by a pair of big brown eyes and floppy ears and wet nose.  I love animals and I love pets.  My dogs in the past were shelter mutts, lovable in their own way, but secretly what I really have always wanted is a female German shepherd.  They have always been my favorite breed.  The closest I ever came to having what I wanted was the shepherd/collie mix that my mother and I rescued from the animal shelter when I was seventeen.  He happened to be a male, and he was a great dog, but he was my mother's dog.

My other favorite breed is the Papillion, another dog I hope one day to own, but they seem to be a bit harder to come by.

Having just bought a house, I was ready to start looking for a dog, but not quite ready yet to rush to the shelter and grab the first homeless pity case I ran across.  This time I was determined to look, research, and get exactly what I wanted.  I had just broken up with my ex-boyfriend and I wanted the perfect dog to make up for the subpar, not-so-perfect ex-boyfriend.

I found Tess the second day I searched petfinder.com  She was listed at the Casper Humane Society as a one-year-old female purebred German shepherd.  I was going out of town in a week for a doctor's appointment, I was absolutely not prepared to bring a dog home yet, let alone one two hours away that I couldn't even go visit, but I called the Casper Humane Society to inquire about the dog.  They told me that someone had already called interested in her and they were fairly certain they wanted to adopt her.  They had her spaying surgery scheduled and when that was done she would be ready to go home with her new family.  They said they could put my name on the list - I would be number 2 - just in case this family decided not to adopt her.

"But," the shelter employee assured me, "They aren't going to change their minds.  They are definitely going to take her."

"Okay," I said.  "That's no problem.  I just wanted to call and see about her."

"Do you still want us to call you in case the adoption falls through?"

"Yeah, sure.  Give me a call if something changes."

"Okay, we have your name on the list.  But nothing will change."

"Thank you."

The next afternoon there was a voicemail from the Casper Humane Society on my phone telling me that if I was still interested in the German shepherd, the adoption had fallen through and I was the second name on the list.  Of course I called them and made an appointment to drive down that Saturday and check her out.  I still wasn't sure at that point if it was a good idea to bring a dog home so soon - I had planned on spending several months finding the perfect dog - but I thought I should at least go check this dog out.  The fact that her "guaranteed adoption" fell through worried me, but how much trouble could a dog be?

I drove down that Saturday to check her out.  She was a Tazmanian devil in her kennel, up on her hind legs, barking in a high-pitched, spoiled, crazy bark.  She was a little sable, smaller than I expected, and just beautiful.  Her conformation was perfect and she had the big brown eyes and small pointed muzzle that always makes me fall for a dog. I wanted to see her out of her kennel so the shelter employee (who was not bad looking himself) put a leash on her so we could take her into a different room.

Talk about not leash-trained!  She jumped up on the employee, twirled around on the lead like a dancer, got herself all tangled up and nearly tripped and fell flat on her face.  She bounded ahead and got pulled up short by the lead, choking herself.  Then she tried to bound back to the employee to give herself slack only to run into his legs.  They both nearly went down.

In the separate room, she raced in circles and sniffed everything.  The shelter employee wasted no time.  "So you want her?"

I asked why the first adoption had fallen through and why she was surrendered in the first place.  Apparently the family who had originally bought her as a puppy from a breeder had surrendered her to the shelter because she was too active and dug in the yard.  They had made a deal with their neighbors to take her off their hands but the neighbors were on vacation and the family just couldn't keep her anymore.  Then when the neighbors returned from their vacation, they came to the shelter to adopt her.  They decided they didn't want her when they found out she was scheduled to be spayed before they could take her home.  They'd wanted to breed her and of course the Human Society does not allow adoptions for breeding.

Against my better judgment - the trip I had scheduled just a day after I brought Tess home, her extremely high energy, and absolutely zero training - I agreed to the adoption.  For the first four months I wanted to kill her.  Now I can't picture my life without her.  She has come a long way from the day in the shelter with no leash skills, bad manners, and an alleged accusation of digging in the yard.  Incidentally the only hole she ever dug in my yard was to bury a very large bone I'd bought her.  Tess has stuck by me through four different boyfriends and five cats (three of which are still living, of course).  The Cowboy has endured partially because he makes an effort with Tess and she loves him and has welcomed him in her pack.

Tess and I were fated to be together.  As for love at first sight, well she reserved that for the Cowboy, but she's still all mine.

Cat vs. Tomato Plant

I have learned my  lesson.  Plants and pets obviously don't mix in my house.  Let's face it.  I do not possess the greenest of thumbs to begin with but the Cowboy and I had managed to grow a few things last summer and I decided to try again this year, if for no other reason then I absolutely adore fresh grown tomato soup.

This year I started my tomato plants early.  I also planted some oregano and I started some peas outside.  The peas, unlike the pets, are the least high maintenance.  A little water, a screen to keep the dog out, and they are good to go.  The oregano has found a happy spot on top of my dresser, the one piece of furniture the cats have not figured out how to jump onto yet.  The tomatoes started as tiny little seeds in a starter kit and I kept them on the refrigerator for the first two weeks, adequately watered and shrouded in a plastic bag.  The cats never went near them.

Of course it was too good to be true.  After all, Percy has been deemed the biggest feline jerk this side of the Rocky Mountains, and considering we live right at the foothills, that's a pretty big area for him to cover.  Don't get me wrong, I love my Percy, but one must face facts and that is that my dear sweet little black ball of lovable fur is actually a great big jackass.  He will poop right during my lunch and make sure it is as smelly as possible.  He chases and terrorizes Willow.  He knocks stuff off the bathroom counter.  He is constantly dancing around my night table, trying to get at my glasses (my glasses are the most interesting toy, I believe).  He waits until I am just about to drift off for a nap and then starts yowling at high pitch and streaking through the house, sounding like a herd of elephants.  It has always amazed me that a twelve-pound cat can make the sound of a stampeding buffalo herd.  He makes the whole house shake.  So adorable fluffball aside, he is actually quite facetious.

The other day I decided it was time to put the tomato plants in sunlight so they can grow.  They had just sprouted.  I had tiny little greenies and I was pretty excited.  So I set them up by my top level window, barricaded with catproof barriers.  I should have known better.  Where there is a will, Percy will find a way.  And he did.  I came home at lunch and he had managed to move the barriers aside and eaten half of the tiny green sprouts.  I'm sure Willow got up there and helped him, but the main culprit is Percy.  He is obsessed with green stuff and I have had to keep all houseplants as far away from him as possible.  Out of twenty plants I managed to salvage nine.  Nine isn't too bad, considering the Cowboy told me that four plants would be plenty to bear the fruit we'd need.  I had planned, however, on giving away the others.  I'm just lucky Percy hadn't been hungry enough to eat all of them and then walk through the dirt and track it around the house.  I am sure that would have come next had I not removed the plants.  I spent the afternoon transplanting each mangled little plant into its own container and then set the containers up in a radio flyer wagon the Cowboy brought over.  The plants are still too small to sit outside at night so I brought the wagon inside and draped it with towels.

Now most cats do not like surfaces that are not stable enough to stand on.  A radio flyer wagon with small pots inside draped with towels does not make a solid surface on which to stand.  This, however, did not deter my cats.  Even Puckett got in on the action and that is rare for her.  She was the first to stalk over, place her front paws on the edge of the wagon, sniff, and then jump up.  She looked genuinely surprised that the surface was not solid and even more surprised when I hollered at her to get down.  She spent the rest of the evening sulking on her box, face mashed in the wall.  Next came Percy.  He and Willow were content to sit underneath the wagon for awhile.  I was reading.  Just as I started to drift off for a short nap, sure enough, Percy jumped onto the towels himself, woke me up, and freaked out because the surface wasn't quite as sturdy as he thought it should be.  In Willow's defense, she only jumped into the wagon because she was too busy chasing a bug.  As usual my little airhead didn't seem to realize that the other two cats got reprimanded for jumping in, so she was going to get it too.

I gave up and took off the towels, replacing them with a big crinkly black garbage bag that I arranged so that it didn't even look remotely like a solid surface.  This didn't deter Percy who started poking around underneath the bag, trying to get in that way.  I am sure once he found his way inside the bag and the wagon he would have panicked and had a heck of a time getting himself back out.  Puckett, after she stopped sulking, came upstairs and poked around as well, even trying once again to jump onto the bag just to see if there was any way she could turn this addition to the household into her new throne.

And as for Tess, she came inside, sniffed the wagon once, wagged her tail against the bag, causing it to rustle (and further exciting the cats) and proceeded to trot to the food bowl to see if anything new had materialized.

I have to say, I love that dog.  Sometimes I swear she reads minds.

This morning, it was already sixty degrees.  Dog, radio flyer wagon complete with ailing tomato plants, and the pot of sprouting oregano went outside to bask in the sunshine.  I left the backdoor open for the cats to enjoy the spring air as well.  With any luck the weather will hold now so that I can leave those plants outside and not have to bring them in anymore.  I honestly don't think I can handle another night of cats vs. tomato plant drama.  The last thing Percy had to say about the whole thing was the huge pile of nasty he left me in the litter box.  Worse than usual, I might add.  It turns out tomato plants are actually toxic to cats.  Considering these were seedlings and barely sprouted and he hadn't really gotten to too many of them, I didn't anticipate him getting too seriously sick.  But he did let me know what his final thoughts were.

When it comes to plants I suppose Tess is my "good child."  I may be eating my words this afternoon when I go home and find my porch strewn with tiny greenies and doggie tracks of dirt.